CIQ Closes $26 Million in Funding
Webinar Synopsis:
Speakers:
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Zane Hamilton, Director of Sales Engineering, CIQ
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Gregory Kurtzer, CEO, CIQ
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Robert Adolph, Chief Product Officer & Co-Founder, CIQ
Note: This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors.
Full Webinar Transcript:
Zane Hamilton:
Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Welcome to another CIQ webcast. This week we have an exciting announcement to make. And for that, I have Greg and Robert here with me. Welcome, gentlemen.
Gregory Kurtzer:
Hello.
Robert Adolph:
How's it going?
Zane Hamilton:
Doing well. So I know there's been a lot of buzz around this the last couple of days. So what exactly are we announcing today?
Gregory Kurtzer:
So yesterday morning we announced that we have completed a $26 million capital raise for CIQ, which was led by Two Bear Capital.
$26 Million Capital Raise for CIQ Led by Two Bear Capital [00:43]
Zane Hamilton:
That's very exciting. And thank you to Two Bear. So what does this mean for CIQ?
Gregory Kurtzer:
Well, since the beginning of what we set out to do, it's all about people, customers, and changing how we are building, deploying, and modernizing infrastructure. That has been our primary goal, our ethos in terms of everything we've been doing since day one. So this gives us a huge amount of additional opportunity that we can leverage so we can really fulfill that vision.
Zane Hamilton:
Very nice. From your perspective, Robert, what does it mean for CIQ?
Robert Adolph:
Taking what Greg said just a step further, our mission has always been the focus on empowering people and that customer and community focus on solving problems. This gives us the ability to do that at a faster speed. It adds stability to what we're doing, and it really helps us dive in and listen to the customer more and be able to act on it faster.
Zane Hamilton:
Yeah, the exciting thing for me is being able to scale better because we're growing and be able to actually spend more time with the customer, understand what people are trying to do, understand where the community is headed and actually bring that back into CIQ and share that so that we can follow what the community and what the customers want – and not just be something that we’re off building in a closet by ourselves because we think it’s “cool.”
CIQ's Vision [02:26]
Gregory Kurtzer:
We've been really driven by that model and ideology ever since day one. What caused us all to come together and solve this problem, which originally started as High Performance Computing, was really focused on customer needs, demands, and major pain points that we were solving. We had a great vision, but it's important to note this vision didn't come from us just pulling it out of thin air, right? This vision came from living in and being a part of this industry, talking to customers, peers, collaborators, colleagues, and meeting with people. That whole process really just drove this vision of what it is that we're creating. We have seen this vision start from High Performance Computing and just take off from there. What has been so exciting is not only being part of and seeing that, and interacting with so many amazing people in the community, but now being able to partner with funding partners that see this vision and get what we’re doing, and being able to all come together to solve this and bring forth innovation, capability, stability, democratization, and support and everything that organizations and people need in this industry. So it's just super exciting.
Robert Adolph:
The first conversation Zane and I ever had was: “I'm frustrated because I can't solve problems and I can't do it fast.” The first conversation I had with Greg was, “Hey Greg, I have this really cool problem. Do you want to help me solve that problem?” Literally, our first conversation we ever had. That is the ethos of what this is. Marlin, our original seed funder – same conversation: “Hey, I want to go solve problems and this is how I want to do it.” And the answer was “yes.” And our original investors – the answer was yes. Now Two Bear, and the answer is: “Go solve those problems at scale.” And that's what we're going to go do.
Zane Hamilton:
That's exciting. Like you said, a big part of the reason that I'm here is to be a part of solving problems. I think the way that a lot of people have started to look at software is more of: I have an idea; I'm going to solve a problem, but I'm going to do it my way. And I think it's exciting to be here where it is: we have an idea; we want to solve a problem – maybe there are other things that we should be thinking about, and being able to listen and collaborate with those other people is something that I don't see a lot of others actually doing. They talk about it, but I don't know if they actually do it. I think a lot of them missed the marks, which is why I'm excited to be here. So continuing down that path, I know when we start talking about Rocky, because of CentOS, it's going to be an interesting topic and I want to understand how it impacts Rocky and the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation.
CentOS Impact on Rocky and the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation [05:49]
Gregory Kurtzer:
That's a great question. So let me backup a little bit, and I'm going to first talk about why we created Rocky, why we were part of it, and what that’s going to look like going forward. So I've articulated that we were focused on infrastructure. We initially set out to solve that infrastructure through High Performance Computing and we jokingly called it HPC 2.0 for a while. I guess we still do to some extent, but we were heads down solving that when the announcement came that CentOS was going to be end-of-lifed. Now that affected us, our peers, people that we're talking to, customers, we felt as though it affected the entire community. So how are we going to move forward and deal with this big shock to the system that pretty much everybody in Enterprise has now felt? It became clear that due to past experience that I had with early days of CentOS, that I could really help as we recreate this to guide this in such a way that we can navigate away from – I don’t mean to be critical but – some of the mistakes that were made early on with CentOS, navigate through that, and take all of the amazing things that CentOS was doing right and bring that back into this project and rebuild that. Now a couple of things that we did differently is the structure and control of the organization. How are we going to ensure that Rocky is available as a stable foundation for decades to come? And the answer to this lies in one simple focus point, which is community. And when we're talking about a community project for enterprise, we're talking about a community of not only individuals, but also enterprises, and everybody coming together to solve and work on that need together. Now, again, the organizational structure that we had to create around this has to be very resilient to any single company doing something negative or adverse to the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation. And we came up with a really cool model actually. When we first created Rocky, our first thought was, honestly, this was going to be a CIQ project. And I've already had experience with bringing an open source project into a company. And I saw what that did to the community firsthand. It harms the community. It’s not good for the community when all the decision-making points, all of the people in control of that project are under the umbrella of that company. It needs to be completely distributed. It needs to be everywhere and everybody being part of this. And so we made a very important decision at that moment, which has affected how we see everything in open source and how we relate that to communities and commercial companies. If anyone remembers the old saying, “If you love something, set it free,” that’s been our model around open source. If you love something, if you really believe in a project, you don't want to control it under a corporate umbrella. You want that project to be completely free of corporate influence and you want to encourage everybody to come and be part of that project, even competitors. That’s the model that we created with Rocky Linux and then the Rocky Linux Software Foundation.
CIQ is a founding partner and sponsor of the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation, but CIQ does not control, own, or hold hostage in any sort of way Rocky. Rocky is completely in the community. Everything from the entire infrastructure that we've built, the entire security paradigms, all of the keys, public/private keys for signing, for encryption, secure boot shims, the entire infrastructure is under the RESF. The engineers supporting it and making decisions about it are in the RESF.
CIQ's one goal – and not to make this completely about Rocky, but I feel as though some of this is really important, so I want to reiterate – CIQ’s whole goal is to be here if anybody needs help. And that's our business model. That's what we're bringing forth is we're here if you need help, and the community is there as well, but if you want an insurance policy, you want a throat to grab if you need, and you need escalation help, we are here, and we want to be that, and we want to help people succeed. That’s our model. We're going to create additional value; we’re going to create additional services and escalation for Rocky Linux.
All of this is my way of saying that this is going to be nothing but amazing for the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation and everybody using Rocky Linux. What this means is that we are now able to put even more money, even more resources and capabilities into Rocky Linux, whether you're community or whether you just need help. We are now here, and we are putting more emphasis into Rocky Linux. We are not changing anything with regards to how Rocky Linux is managed. We are actually going to now help to define that with all of our contributors, developers, team leads, and also our partners and sponsors. So if you haven't seen the Rocky Enterprise Linux software sponsors and partner list, you should take a look at it. The model was we want everybody being part of that community. We've been really successful so far and that's still growing. So that’s our goal. This is going to be nothing but amazing for the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation, Rocky Linux, and all of those users in that entire community. So nothing is changing on that front except for more awesomeness.
Zane Hamilton:
Very nice. I think it's important to point out that the stuff that was done with CentOS was out of necessity. It was small because things didn't exist the way they do today. It's easier to have a larger shared community. I mean, the internet has come a long way in 20 years. So being able to collaborate, have more people be involved, and be able to get resources to do builds is something that wasn't quite available the way that it is today. So it's exciting to see how open things have become and how people can contribute to it in a meaningful way that maybe wasn't available, as a part of a lesson learned from CentOS.
Gregory Kurtzer:
That's a really important point, Zane. The culture of early CentOS was shaped that way. I mean, the goal was always community, but it was very hard to extend the circle of trust when we're talking about things like private keys with the community at large. So we had to keep it small early on but that created a culture of CentOS that was difficult to break out of. It made it very easy for a single organization to acquire CentOS, simply by hiring a small number of people. So we are creating an organization and again, not to make this about RESF but just to demonstrate, RESF is a whole series of checks and balances within that organization. So there's no way that any single organization can have a negative effect on that series of checks and balances; what this creates is more value and it's more value to the community, first and foremost.
Zane Hamilton:
Yeah, that's fantastic. So stepping away from the Rocky conversation and looking at the rest of CIQ as a part of this funding, what can we expect to see over this next 6, 9, 12 months coming out of this because of the raise?
The Future of CIQ [15:00]
Robert Adolph:
Yeah, absolutely. So just to take what Zane and Greg said one further on the open source aspects, obviously we're involved in more than just the Rocky community. We're involved in the Apptainer, formerly Singularity, community, and we're involved in the Warewulf community. Obviously, we have a next generation compute platform that we're going to bring out to the general public here very rapidly. There are multiple different investments that we're making to secure, stabilize, and make it easier for people to get involved in every single one of these open source projects. So we want to tie them together to form a solution, whether it's traditional HPC, whether it's a next-generation HPC stack, or whether it's infrastructure 2.0. So we have large plans and we're able to now execute on those plans at scale, and to bring forth our vision of tying this together in a meaningful way. So it's just getting accelerated. And our next 3, 6, 9 months, you're going to see a lot of multiple different offerings that are productized from us coming to market that just enhances each one of these communities and enhances what people can do at each one of those different communities.
Gregory Kurtzer:
I want to add to that a little bit. Robert concluded that piece on communities, and that is such a big piece of how we see the world. Open source is just critical to the success of almost every organization at this point. And it is so critical that open source is something that can be relied upon, leveraged, enhanced, and developed upon. That is one of the absolute core reasons why a huge chunk of this investment is going to be going back into that open source community, back into those tools, back into that foundation that we leverage, our customers leverage, the community leverages. That’s us doing our part to be part of that and to support that. So you will see us making additional hires. You're going to see us making a considerable amount of growth, and really focusing on the stability of these open source projects and putting more resources into these open source projects. Again, not for the sake of owning or controlling, for the sake of making sure that the entire community has this stable foundation. And again, our model is: if you need any help, we’re here to help. Give us a call. Let us prove it to you.
Robert Adolph:
Yeah, I'll add one thing, because this is actually really important to understand. So this is an investment from teams of investors that believe in us and what we're doing, but every time somebody does business with us, the exact same thing happens. So what Greg just described, isn't just an investor investing in us, it’s every time somebody does business with us, we do the exact same thing. So just remember that our ethos doesn't change because an investor gave us money. It is the exact same model as a customer investing in us and using us as their escalation points, using us to solve a problem, using us to enable and empower what they're doing. So that’s what we’re doing. Just by doing business with us, the exact same thing Greg just said is going to be reiterated over and over again.
Zane Hamilton:
The model that we have is different from most other software companies out there in terms of the way that they support software. We support people. It's something that's bringing more and more customers in. As those customers come in, obviously we need to scale. So that's becoming important as well, which goes back to Greg's earlier point of: we are growing. And I want to make sure that we tell everybody, where are we growing? What types of people are we looking for? And how is that going?
Who We Are Looking to Hire [19:39]
Gregory Kurtzer:
Oh, it is across the spectrum right now. We are looking to scale up the company, pretty much on every aspect of the company. We are looking for Linux developers; we're looking for SREs; we're looking for Golang developers, solutions architects, sales, IT, management, the entire spectrum of the organization. And in terms of projects that we’re working on, obviously if anyone is interested in joining in any of those sorts of areas and they’re interested in things like Rocky Linux, what are we doing in the enterprise Linux space, what are we doing with containers via Apptainer and Singularity, what are we doing with operating system provisioning and imaging, and if people are interested in being part of that, absolutely. We are growing, and we are so looking forward to speaking with people that are really passionate about these areas. And there's even more. As we're looking forward, we're starting off in the HPC space and figuring out, “How do we take compute, that same compute model that has been leveraged for the last near 30 years, modernize it, and continue to grow and stabilize it?” Jokingly, we call it HPC 2.0, but how do we take that model now and start applying that to cloud, enterprise, hyperscalers, and how do we continuously grow and innovate that entire global infrastructure? And that’s really what we are so passionate about is building that infrastructure and creating that next generation of infrastructure, infrastructure 2.0. Well, that sounds so cliche.
Robert Adolph:
The second conversation Greg and I had was: “Hey, when you come here, I want your opinion. I want you to set strategy. I want you to tell us what the customer is saying, over and over again” We have a very flat organization. So if you want a place where your ideas are going to be heard, and you're part of the strategy, that's the type of people we're looking for. If that’s the type of environment you’re looking for, we’re looking for those types of folks.
What Kind of Problems Is CIQ Solving for the Community? [22:12]
Gregory Kurtzer:
I'm going to take this one step even further, which is: what kind of problems are we solving for the community? Coming out of High Performance Computing, this has always been an extraordinarily interesting question. Half of the time when I'm meeting with other people in HPC, I'm meeting, asking questions, and understanding their research, understanding their science. And I mean the types of scientific problems and research problems that we have actually supported, helped to solve, and helped to accelerate, is massive. Our customers and people using our projects include everything from medical science, people looking to cure diseases, people looking to solve real problems that affect everybody in the world, going all the way through cutting-edge technology, aerospace, sending software into outer space, right? Everything that we're doing is about solving not only technically challenging problems but extraordinarily rewarding problems. This has been not only our ethos but our entire goal in terms of why we are doing this. A lot of organizations just talk about this, and they put something out there. This is such a guiding principle for us. It is so critical and so core to our culture that we are helping people. We are empowering people, such that they can go off and they can do the most amazing things that you can imagine. That’s what we’re doing. We are looking for people to join us with that vision and that enthusiasm.
Robert Adolph:
I’ll tell you, too: it’s not going to stop at these open source solutions. We contribute to other open source solutions that people probably aren't aware of, and other investments and growth, which is going to expand upon that even further. So the reality is that this doesn't end with what we're talking about. We're going to grow and continuously add capabilities to the communities and people that we serve, so this doesn’t stop with where we’re at today.
Zane Hamilton:
It's exciting. And I've also been very excited to bring in some interesting, not necessarily what we would think of as a traditional use case for what we’re doing, but actually bringing use cases that are just interesting. They look at our product and see that it solves a problem for them, and it’s maybe not what we were thinking about to begin with, but to see how that's gone and the excitement behind us working with other people to solve real world problems has been fun.
We have a question from Justin. He says, “How do I apply?” So, the easiest place to go is to ciq.co. There is a careers page on there and find what interests you and then go ahead and send in your resume, and let us talk to you and see where you would fit and what you're interested in doing. That's a great thing about being here as well, as obviously we're still small and growing. So having, like Robert said, a voice into what we're doing and being able to share experiences and ideas and knowledge is something that we really look forward to and welcome.
Open Source and Communities [25:39]
Gregory Kurtzer:
I'm going to add to that, too. Even if you're at a place where you love to be, and you're not looking to move, join our communities. I even said that wrong – it’s not “our” communities. Join the communities, be part of open source, and be part of these things that are passionate to us and other people. Just join and be part of it. I think what you'll find is there are so many like-minded people that are so excited to actually help others and be part of this movement of people helping each other through software and giving that back to the world. It really is an amazing thing.
I've been playing and being part of open source since the mid to late nineties – around ‘96, ‘97. It's been a remarkable journey to watch, not only how communities and open source has now changed, but how we think about software, software development, and building things, and how that community has so massively influenced everything we're doing in the commercial, enterprise, computing, federal, and academia space. It really is amazing. And the open source community has now matured to such a point in which it's really a joy to be part of. So I would encourage everybody to join and be a part of open source. If you want to get paid for working on open source projects, look us up.
Zane Hamilton:
Yeah. That is something that I think a lot of people that I run across in the enterprise are excited about open source. They aren't necessarily developers at a level where they're writing middleware so they think that there's no way for them to get involved. And I think it's important to know that there are far more ways to get involved than just writing code. I mean, just being able to identify bugs is important. Being able to write documentation is important. Being a tester is important. And being able to give back in that way, like Greg said, by joining a community and helping. There are a lot of different roles that you can contribute back from.
Gregory Kurtzer:
Yeah, absolutely. The funding marks a really interesting pivot point for us as an organization as we're graduating now from an early stage startup to a much more mature company. In doing so, it's been amazing to watch the transformation occurring right before our eyes. It’s remarkable. And if anybody watching this has not had the opportunity to see this sort of thing in action, and to be part of a small organization or community that's actually funded to go and do amazing things, it is a lot of fun. I spent a long time in the Department of Energy and federal space and academia. And this is like that, while holding down the fast forward key and moving as quickly as we can, and really making an impact and a difference in the world and seeing that. One of the coolest things that I love to see, and I've been lucky and very fortunate to be part of various open source projects, but one of the things that I’ve seen that is just so amazing is when I start looking at resumes that are coming in and other job descriptions, and I start to see the project names that I've been fortunate enough to be part of starting to show up, like in normal conversation. And seeing other people presenting and showing that these tools and capabilities were beneficial to them as part of their research and growth. There are a lot of really cool aspects about being part of a young startup organization. Again, we are looking for people in the industry that are just amazing and that want to be part of something like this, want to help other people, want to be part of open source. This funding gives us that ability to now scale up massively. So now is the time to join if you're interested.
Zane Hamilton:
So Greg, I run across people who have made the change from writing enterprise code that is in some way proprietary software that maybe gets sold, maybe it's in house, and then they move into an open source world, and it changes their view of how software gets written. What experience have you seen from that perspective?
How Does Open Source Change How Software Gets Written? [31:00]
Gregory Kurtzer:
I've definitely experienced the same sort of comments from people that have come from commercial industry and even federal space where they can't open source things, if they're working under some level of clearance or controls. It is very free and that’s the way I would describe it. There’s some pros and cons, of course, just like anything. But the pros are so massive in comparison to the cons and being able to leverage that and be part of that. We talked a little bit about the mantra of if you love something, set it free. And I've consulted for a number of companies at this point about their open source model and how they are approaching open source. And I like to use this way of describing it, which is: if you're not ready for your competitors to actually be more successful with your open source project than you are, then you're not ready to open source; don’t open source it. There's nothing wrong with keeping something commercial, or keeping it a closed source. There’s lots of really good reasons why an organization would want to do that. But if you are ready for that grand leap and ready to open source it, then you should do it in such a way that doesn't hold it hostage. You should do it in such a way that is completely open and allow the community to develop because that community will drive – something we talk a lot about startups is product market fit – and that community will drive that product market fit. It will go where the need is, if you support it and don't hold it hostage. So there’s a lot of value in being part of open source. But I want to be clear, not everything has to be open source. So at some point we are going to release open source what we're working on, in terms of the software side of infrastructure 2.0, Fuzzball. That will be released as open source at some point in the future. We're not ready to open source it yet, but when we do, we’re already looking forward to that moment. And we’re looking forward to being able to leverage that infrastructure, such that as that continues to help other people and continues to grow, the more value that it creates for people, is all the more reason why open sourcing it will become more and more important over time.
Zane Hamilton:
I've had several friends that if they are working on enterprise software, they will get involved in an open source project. Maybe because it's running their software and they will spend more time at home at night writing and fixing things that they want it to do or think that it should do. Then it becomes an addiction and they start looking for somewhere else to write code. It’s interesting to see that transition when people get the freedom to work on things they want to work on that they find interesting, far more than “I have to go write this thing today.”
Robert Adolph:
The only thing I'd add is: I just like to solve big problems with cool people. At the end of the day, it's that simple. It is fun to go do something complex and see it work. If it's open source, if it's enterprise, I just don't care. We are going after big problems and we're going to continuously expand that and solve them.
Zane Hamilton:
That's great. So Justin had another question, asking what are we going to do with the funding? That's a little more of a direct question.
Use of Funding [34:56]
Gregory Kurtzer:
This question is great. We actually get it quite often. So we've done a lot of media interviews over the past couple weeks now. Every single media, author, and person writing content is asking this question. What are we going to be doing with the funding? We talked about hiring already, but I think this really comes down to – I think the way we need to describe it – is a couple fold. The hiring is going to be driving several strategic initiatives. The biggest one is that the demand we have coming in is massive and we want to be able to accelerate to meet that demand. This is probably the number one best case scenario for why somebody would want to ever raise money. You have the demand already, and now you're growing and escalating such that you can meet that demand.
We've seen such an amazing amount of uptake from Rocky Linux, which is the number that we've been able to really drive down on in terms of a reliable figure, is at least a quarter million downloads per month. If you think of how many installs taht is, it is a massive amount of installs. It’s a lot. We are trying at this point to keep up with that because I’m not going to say a large percentage or the majority of people is now looking for support because most people are used to not having that support in CentOS. So most people that are transitioning from CentOS aren't thinking of it from a support perspective. But what we're finding is if you couple a really good customer-focused model with appropriate value ads that add value to that open source community, we're seeing uptake, getting inquiries, getting requests, and we're starting to see all of these things starting to go through procurement processes. We actually have to meet those demands now. The best case scenario for why you would ever want to raise money is that demand is there and you have to meet it. You have to scale up for that. And that's exactly what we're seeing right now. So we’re scaling up to meet the demand that we’re seeing.
We're also going to be accelerating certain pieces of our roadmap in terms of features and capability. We have not only on the Rocky side but also the Fuzzball side, which is the HPC 2.0 cloud platform that we have now developed, we're seeing so much interest in that. It's actually hard for us even to keep up with that. We have been following that as quickly as we can and managing the requests coming in for POCs, but we are in early user access right now with POCs. We're going to have a press release coming out as this thing goes GA, probably later in Q3. And so that's going to happen here pretty soon, but all of this funding is going to help accelerate all these things. It's going to help drive customer success, meet customer demand and really help us scale out as an organization.
Robert Adolph:
I'll just put a little bit of depth to it from a different perspective. We have a CTO that blows me away every time I talk to him. We have a noted Linux author on staff now. We have young engineers that are beyond brilliant, who invest 18 to 24 hours a day to build build systems and get things out. We just hired a new VP of engineering that absolutely blew me away yesterday. We also have a VP of services that blows me away, every time I talk to him. He has a team of people that are helping our customers every day that blow me away. I never have to ask people to do things twice. Everybody jumps; everybody's doing things in their own labs. The only thing I would say is that I’m always before Greg when it comes to the latest releases of Rocky; he’s usually asking me questions, just making that point, and I have Rocky on more systems than he does right now. But at the end of the day, we just like to have fun, and there are a lot of great people that we're going to add to the staff that are going to do great things.
Zane Hamilton:
So I think that's all the questions I had for you guys. We're up on time. Thank you, Two Bear, we really appreciate it. We're looking forward to where this takes us and the journey ahead.
CIQ Investors [40:18]
Gregory Kurtzer:
Two Bear led this round, absolutely. But they are by no means the only investors in this round. We actually have a great group of investors and we're going to be releasing PRs here shortly that are going to highlight some of these other investors that are part of what it is that we're doing. We're also going to be releasing additional PRs on some of the team members and advisory board members that we have now that are joining us. I am so looking forward to being able to share all of this. You’re going to see this coming very soon. So pay attention, watch out for this. And if you want to be part of one of the coolest things that I've ever done, reach out to us. We'd love to talk to you.
Zane Hamilton:
Very nice. Robert, anything to close with?
Robert Adolph:
No, I’m just grateful for all of our investors and the partnerships that every single one of them are already starting to engage with us on and working extremely closely with us to help solve problems for all of their friends and people that can utilize all the solution sets that we have.
Zane Hamilton:
That's fantastic. So thank you guys very much for joining; thank you to our investors and to our team internally that is growing. Like we've said, there's a lot of people that put in a lot of time to make this machine work and we really appreciate it. There's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that most people don't know about. So to all of you, we really appreciate it. Thanks for the continued effort. We will add the links below for how to find a job with us. And if you ever need anything else, reach out; there's a link on there. You can get in contact with us. We'd be happy to talk to you and see how we can help. And we will see you again next week. Thank you very much.
Gregory Kurtzer:
Bye!